a stapler seems quaint until that one day every 3 years where it is absolutely crucial you have one, fully loaded

The first is a statement on MUP's closure of Meanjin, from me and many of my colleagues in Publishing and Communications at the University of Melbourne. The second is from one of my talented students. 💙

At the rally to save Meanjin this morning, looking at the expressions on people’s faces as we listened to π.ο. give a reading which was really more like an incantation, thinking not for the first time that no organisation which tries to put such experiences in monetary terms can be trusted with art.

just not ready to say vale meanjin, when literally nothing has been tried

Meanjin Journal is 85 years old; older than the Sydney Opera House. Closing it down is cultural vandalism of the highest order, roughly equivalent to demolishing the above mentioned opera house. I am disgusted @meanjin.bsky.social

Decision to close Meanjin criticised as act of ‘utter cultural vandalism’

One of the reasons I don’t buy the “financial decision” line from MUP is that I’m a Meanjin subscriber, someone (ostensibly) in a position to add a donation to my subscription, and I wasn’t informed about these apparent dire straits. Who cancels the whole thing before pulling the fund-raising lever?

I wrote for Crikey about the decision to shut Meanjin down - and to sever a connection to a hopeful progressive vision of Australian culture

Here's me in Guardian Australia on the total debacle with Meanjin. www.theguardian.com/books/commen...

Meanjin has a highly engaged subscriber base, here and overseas. It gets tonnes of subs every time it opens them (often and for free). It's works are on university reading lists. It's a signal achievement for a writer to appear in its pages. The value lost for the uni (and us) is huge.